Bringing Backing Tracks into the 21st Century

Introduction

Until now, the only way to add reactive instrumentation to your live music has been to play alongside other musicians. Since the 1960s, recording technology has given musicians the backing track and with it the requirement to be slaved to the click. Reactive Backing is the long overdue evolution of the backing track.

Play exactly what you want, how you want and Reactive Backing will adjust with you, no click needed. It's like having all the pro musicians you could ever want but without the price tag or the temper tantrums! Welcome to the future of live performance.

Details

Reactive Backing is a set of plugins that allows a Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) to react to a musician in real time.

There are three areas of variation: Tempo, Dynamics and Arrangement. The Dynamics and Arrangement devices are available as Max for Live devices. Please see links for purchasing and video demonstrations below.

Tempo:

Tempo is varied by tracking the intuitive movements of the musician: foot tapping. This is achieved with a wearable Bluetooth accelerometer and our unique system of Relative Tap Tempo. The prototype / proof of concept that you can see in the videos below has prompted development of a dedicated wearable hardware device and a cross platform / DAW plugin.

So, please watch this space! If you would like notifications please send us a message here, or sign up at the bottom.

Dynamics:

RB.dynamics takes the incoming level of a control track (for example guitar, keyboard or vocal) and uses this to control the velocity (for MIDI) or gain (for audio) of up to ten other tracks per plugin (the image below is cropped after the first track).

Arrangement:

Easily manageable arrangement changes are made possible by expanding the number of loops available. As is traditional, DAWs allow one loop. Using the RB.4loops or RB.8loops devices, you can have up to eight loop-able areas enabled with only a single button.